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Once “dating” went something like this: shower, shave your legs, get dressed, round up some mates (ideally less attractive than yourself) go out, talk rubbish to strangers, gradually discover you don’t like them and attractive people don’t like you. Drink yourself into oblivion, go home, have a cry and resign yourself to a life of self-pity and meals for one.

Fortunately, we now live in a world of dating convenience. Dating sites came along and reduced the charade to simply: log on, upload a five-year-old Photoshopped photograph of yourself and wait to see who suits. It saved a lot of time, a lot of money and a lot of social interaction. But apparently, not enough.

To advocate this you simply log in using your Facebook account, select the friends you want to get to know better and if (and only if) a friend you have selected selects you to be part of their elite, an email is sent to inform you both of your kindred desires. Reads like poetry.

Since the app’s launch in January, everyone has been either up in arms about it or getting to know their friends intimately. More than 750,000 people have signed up, and voyeuring through the comments on various websites to ascertain a general consensus has brought me no end of joy. Opinions range from “a sexual revolution” to “ruining lives” with a distinct absence of middle ground. In my quest to see what all the fuss is about, I registered with Plenty of Fish. Within 10 minutes I had already accumulated some interest. “Can you handle my package?” one inquired. My honest response of ‘Yes, evolution provided me the ability to handle an average-sized penis, thank you” poured out onto the screen. Our “relationship” has been on hold since that initial exchange.

Unperturbed, I awaited my next suitor. It was four minutes before I received this: “Y0u r 2 fiiiiit u r tha baDdist grl iv sin in a loong tym. U feelin this?” I literally hadn’t managed to decipher this Shakespearean-inspired verse before receiving his next instalment of flattery: “u mkIN me SoO HrnY ;P”. Call me a cynic, but I had an inkling me and this guy probably aren’t going to work out. Maybe this was just a bad site? In one hour I had received 12 requests from men who wanted to meet me (having had no previous contact whatsoever) and six messages that ranged from “Hi Bbe” to an offer of £50 for my underwear.

Now, as the majority of my undergarments cost £1 from Primark, this was, admittedly, one of the more tempting offers. In all seriousness though, there are plenty of fish — certainly, but I was fast becoming a vegetarian. To call it a “dating” app I felt gave undue weight to what the service offered.

After a particularly lurid suggestion from one man, I referred to his profile that claimed he was “looking for a relationship”. Surely this isn’t what dating has been reduced to? I asked around friends, acquaintances and some unsuspecting strangers who had used dating apps, to divulge their experiences and get a more informed insight.

One woman detailed her correspondence with “a very cute guy” whom she was about to meet. “On the phone he told me in the bedroom he wanted to be the ‘submissive’ man. I asked what he meant.” After a list of unsavoury requests including chewing his food for him, she politely declined to meet.

A female friend disclosed: “I’ve used Plenty of Fish, Match, Okcupid and Blendr.... and received loads of messages from weirdos. OkCupid advised you when someone on the dating site was near you.... I freaked out when I was at work and it told me there was a potential match nearby!”

Despite these experiences, I was aware of success stories and was keen to hear from someone who had gone the extra mile to meet up.

“I met three guys through POF in real life who, although they weren’t right for me, weren’t too bad. I just found it hard getting to know people when you have nothing in common. You can’t chat about your friends as they don’t know them and can’t relate to the stories.

I don’t think I will ever use them again,” said a 29-year-old girlfriend.

One male confessed: “The women look great in their pictures but when it comes to actually meeting them, they’re really unattractive. I went on dates with three women before I stopped using the app. Two looked absolutely nothing like their photos when I met them; they were not attractive to me at all. Sheer false advertisement. The other woman was just awkward.”

His friend, a former user of Blendr, agreed: “It’s a very aesthetic thing — if you don’t like the look of the person contacting you, you don’t reply. On the rare occasion you actually meet up, you realise you can’t stand their personality... Waste of time.”

Even my housemate had dating site experience: “I have been on a couple of dates with guys who seemed ‘perfect’ — good jobs, own homes, perfect gentlemen, ready to settle down... but when it came to the crunch, the thought of being physical with them repelled me! There was no chemistry whatsoever. Once I spoke to a gorgeous-looking guy for weeks before arranging to meet him. When I did, he grinned at me and his four front teeth were missing. He later confessed to having two kids, which probably wouldn’t have bothered me, it was just the fact that he lied about it. I feel these are things you should share when getting to know someone.” One man I spoke to even confessed to exaggerating his annual income from £24k to £100k. “No one checks,” he said.

Stories such as these made me think there could be some usefulness in Bang Your Friends after all. This app only connects you to your Facebook “friends” which, presumably you have already found enough common ground with to begin a friendship (of some degree) or have at least already met, eradicates the possibility of awkward surprises.

Some have, of course, argued apps like these encourage infidelity and promiscuity but I think it is important to remember that making things easier does not necessarily make them happen. If you really want to cheat, you will. If you want to sleep around, you will. You don’t need an app for that, my friends.

While I know that not all sex I will have (or have had) will lead to a loving long-term relationship, there is still an innate belief in me that it should. It has been drilled into me (by my Catholic father and conservative mother) that this is what sex is for, while Bang Your Friends et al freely advocate no-strings-attached encounters and that is what makes people uncomfortable. But then again we are so used to immediate gratification in all other aspects of our lives that it only makes sense that this follows.

So do these apps spell the end for actually going out and meeting people organically? I think not. In fact, I don’t think dating has changed much at all. Since joining Plenty of Fish, the only difference I can discern are these “weirdos” are not in bars any more, they’re in my inbox.